The Flood (through the eyes of a ten year old)

La inundación (a través de los ojos de una niña de diez años)

Sarah Loiselle

I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. My parents said it was raining a lot. I felt a little bit confused. I asked my parents, “Why are we waking up so early?” They said that it might flood. I noticed that my parents were very anxious and stressed out. I put all of my belongings on my desk to avoid getting them damaged with water. My parents told me that we were going to the Hoffman’s, our friends and neighbors that live on our street. Their house was more elevated than our house, and it would not flood. They wanted to prevent us from being in the house when there was water.

While we were going to our neighbor’s house, my flip-flops got stuck in the mud. I thought that I was going to hurt myself since I had to walk the rest of the way barefoot. When I got to our neighbor’s house, I couldn’t fall back asleep at all. I listened to the rain pouring and I was surprised about how much water there was. I was not expecting this much water! I saw a lot of other people being rescued by kayaks from their houses.

@Sarah Loiselle

Later on I was having breakfast and I saw a lot of other people that same day. It turned out a lot of people also swam from their houses looking for help. When I went to the front porch of the house, I saw a lot of rain pouring outside. It covered three steps! A lot more people came in that day. I saw my dad and another man carrying a lady who was about ninety-five years old from her house across the street because she was trapped. The water was up to my dad’s waist. I was proud that my dad did such a good deed. After that, a mother and her son got rescued by a helicopter. This was fascinating to watch. It was amazing to observe a person coming down by a rope and to see the cable detached from the rescuer’s harness and he didn’t even fall!

Afterwards, I had lunch and I saw my dad go on a kayak to get food and clothing from our house. We didn’t have enough to feed everybody at our neighbor’s. When he came back he told us that our home flooded. I felt sad and concerned about my room and my stuffed animals. I wanted to go to rescue them and bring them with me to the Hoffman’s. My dad wasn’t sure how much water we had. I heard that my friend Ilana had five feet of water in her house! I felt bad for her. Almost everyone in my neighborhood had flooded. Luckily, I flooded only one to three inches. Besides, my parents put everything on bricks except for my bed, which was very cheap, and my parents didn’t care about it.

This episode taught me several things. First, people are very generous by letting other people stay in their houses. Also, I learned that communities help each other by providing free meals every day, and that people from all around the world are trying to help us as much as they can. This is a wonderful thing to do and makes the world a better place!